Baghdad - Three bombings targeting the headquarters of the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar's provincial government killed at least 16 people and injured 30 more, police and witnesses said. The first two bombs were planted on a car and a motorcycle in a parking lot in front of the government compound in the city of al-Ramadi, 118 kilometres west of Baghdad.
The third bomb, apparently a suicide attack, exploded as emergency workers and volunteers carried the wounded to a nearby hospital, police and witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa.
Many of the casualties were police officers, though police said that in the initial confusion after the attack, it was difficult to know how many.
Al-Ramadi and nearby Falluja, in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, were formerly the site of some of the worst fighting between Sunni insurgents and Iraqi and US forces in the area.
The worst of the fighting subsided when Iraqi and US forces enticed some former insurgents to join government-allied Sahwa, or "Awakening," militias with promises of weapons, money, training and jobs in the Interior Ministry, though deadly attacks in the area continue.
